Manuel Cardona

Manuel Cardona Castro (7 September 1934 – 2 July 2014) was a condensed matter physicist. According to the ISI Citations web database, Cardona was one of the eight most cited physicists since 1970. He specialized in solid state physics. Cardona's main interests were in the fields of: Raman scattering (and other optical spectroscopies) as applied to semiconductor microstructures, materials with tailor-made isotopic compositions, and high Tc superconductors, particularly investigations of electronic and vibronic excitations in the normal and superconducting state.
Academic career
Cardona was born in Barcelona, Spain in 1934. After obtaining a Masters in physics in 1955 from University of Barcelona Cardona was awarded a fellowship to work as a graduate student at Harvard University starting in 1956. At Harvard he began investigations of the dielectric properties of semiconductors, in particular germanium and silicon. With this work as a thesis he received a PhD in Applied Physics at Harvard. From 1959 till 1961 he continued similar work on III-V semiconductors at the RCA Laboratories in Zurich, Switzerland. In 1961 he moved to the RCA Labs in Princeton, NJ, where he continued work on the optical properties of semiconductors and started investigations of the microwave properties of superconductors. In 1964 he became a member of the Physics Faculty of Brown University (Providence, RI). In June–September 1965 he taught at the University of Buenos Aires under the auspices of the Ford Foundation. In 1971 he moved to Stuttgart, Germany as a founding director of the then-recently created Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research. Concomitantly he became scientific Member of the Max Planck Society, where he became emeritus in 2000.
From 1992 to 2004, Cardona served as chief editor of Solid State Communications.
Distinctions and honors
Besides receiving over at least 61 awards during his career, Cardona held eleven honorary doctorates. Some notable honors include:
1964 American Physical Society, Fellow
1982 Narcís Monturiol Medal, Government of Catalonia
1984 Frank Isakson Prize, American Physical Society
1984 Fellow, Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science
1984 Corresponding Member, Royal Academy of Sciences of Barcelona
1987 Member, National Academy of Sciences of the USA
1987 Grand Cross of Alfonso X el Sabio, Spain
1988 Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research, named after the Crown Prince of Spain
1991 Member, Academia Europaea
1994 Max Planck Research Prize, shared with E. E. Haller, Berkeley
1995 Corresponding Member, Spanish Royal Academy of Sciences
1997 John Wheatley Award, American Physical Society
1999 Ernst Mach Medal, Prague
2001 Nevill Mott Medal and Prize
2003 Matteucci Medal by the Accademia nazionale delle scienze, Italy
2009 Fellow, Royal Society of Canada
2011 Vernadsky Gold Medal of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
2012 Paul Klemens Award, Phonons Conference, Ann Arbor, MI.
2012 Luis Federico Leloir Prize, Argentina
Publications
Cardona has authored over 1,300 scientific publications in international journals, ten monographs on solid state physics and co-authored a textbook on semiconductors. Since 1972, Cardona has served on the Board of Editors of at least seven journals, including being the Editor-in-Chief of Solid State Communications from 1992 to 2005.
Some of his works include:
Manuel Cardona: Modulation Spectroscopy, Academic Press 1969. Lib of Congress 55-12299
Manuel Cardona, Gernot Günterodt and Roberto Merlin: Light Scattering in Solids I-IX (nine volumes) Springer Verlag;
Pere Bonnin: Manuel Cardona i Castro, Fundació Catalana per a la Recerca, Barcelona 1998
Peter Y. Yu and Manuel Cardona, Fundamentals of semiconductors, 4 editions 1996-2000,
Personal life
He died in Stuttgart in 2014, where he lived since 1971 with his wife Inge Cardona (née Hecht). He held American, German and Spanish citizenship and had 3 children and 7 grandchildren.
References
External links
Marvin L. Cohen, Francisco de la Cruz, Lothar Ley, Miles V. Klein, Michael Thewalt, and Peter Y. Yu, "Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences (2016)
1934 births
2014 deaths
Spanish physicists
Scientists from Barcelona
University of Barcelona alumni
Scientists from Catalonia
Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences
Members of the Lincean Academy
Harvard University alumni
Brown University faculty
Fellows of the American Physical Society
Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada
Spectroscopists
Academic journal editors
Max Planck Institute directors